My old radio

Back in the Mesozoic Age, when I was in sixth grade, I started having trouble sleeping. It would seem that all the sounds I’d heard throughout the day would start coming back to me, playing in my head over and over throughout the night.It was maddening.

After a couple of nights like this, I did the logical thing: I asked my mom. She decided it was time to give me my first radio. It wasn’t new, but it was better than new. It was a Toshiba, late 70’s model, back when listening to the radio was still cool, before people had cassette tapes and 8-tracks. It was solid black, and it had dials and knobs up the wazoo. Beside the usual volume, tuning and bass/trebble controls, it could pick up AM, FM, and about seven different frequencies I had never heard of. I loved how the dial lit up in green hues. And here was an interesting feature: it had a timer. You could turn on the radio and set up the timer to shut it down anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes. Conversely, if you set up the timer with the radio off, it would turn it on when the time ran out.

Right now, I can’t fathom the logic that was behind my mom’s solution, but she was right. I don’t remember ever having trouble sleeping anymore. But I remember a couple of sleepless nights toying with the knobs on that cool radio of mine.